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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Contemporary Topics of Islamic Thought Considering Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Alasdair MacIntyre's Whose Justice? Which Rationality? [^1] Is an important book, a book with which Muslims, in particular, need to become acquainted. The author, Alasdair MacIntyre, is one of the most profound and most controversial moralists and social thinkers of our time. The book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is not an easy work.

It requires some familiarity with various details of Western culture, in particular its moral and political philosophies. So, rather than merely summarize the work, I will try to show why I think it is important for Muslim thinkers to read and criticize it.

For this purpose I begin with a general discussion of the work's importance in the context of MacIntyre's other writings, and then turn to two of the major topics discussed in the work, relativism and liberalism, and the related issues of religion and historicism. Along the way I offer some humble criticisms of my own, and suggestions for further research.

Of all those who have stood against the currents of modernism, Alasdair MacIntyre stands out as the philosopher who has offered the most profound critique. Born in 1929 in Glasgow, Scotland, he has taught at Leeds University, University College, Oxford, the University of Essex, Boston University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Notre Dame, has written ten books, has edited important anthologies, and has authored about two hundred articles and book reviews.

His After virtue, which was first published in 1981, sent shock waves through the Western intellectual world.[^2] He committed what for many was an unforgivable sin when he claimed that the project of the Enlightenment period of European thought was a failure. This rejection of modernist thinking was focused upon moral philosophy, but it attracted the attention of a readership much wider than what could be expected for a book in ethics.